Through the scotched tape glass

A middle aged, pot-bellied, half-balding man, who looks like happy Buddha, except for the grouching squint on his face. The almost cross-eyed look was because he was trying too hard to balance his eyeglasses that was missing its two most important parts — the "arms" of a pair of glasses that keep the thing on your head. Debating incessantly, and trying to make me understand that I was wrong in my decisions in an important planning meeting, this was my most beloved senior sub-editor.

He carried on like this for a week because he did not have the time to go to an optician from all the workload, so try not to mind the typos too much this week. It was not the broken glass of the senior sub-editor, but the press ghost again; ahem!

That brings me to my child, who somehow managed an entire academic year with scotch taped hinges holding the lopsided temples in place. Since this was the third broken frame for that year, I said I will not order a fourth one, and that he should take care of it himself.

Thus, the cool taped hinges and the amazing class IX grades. Shocker! If I may add, now in university and living abroad, I have given him six extra frames, just in case.

Now, that again brings me to my darling friend's only child, who, by the way, is doing her Masters in Budapest. This beautiful child has an uncanny way of wriggling like a worm all her life, and as a result, her lovely mane would have remnants of the poached egg from breakfast, or her passport and boarding cards would go missing while in transit etc. etc.

This love recently managed to lose and break all three of her spectacles, and claims she is almost blind without them. Frantically, her mum got three more glasses made within a day, and asked me to courier it using my discount. This was such an SOS moment that even I had to stop in-between meetings to manage the dispatch.

Now, my man Friday in the courier office was asking for the Budapest address, which my friend forgot to provide.  The real ordeal began, wiggling the address out of the almost blind girl. She did not know her address, and did not have time to ask the landlady, and after almost a week of urgency delayed, she gave her friend's address.

Last time I heard, the ever so urgent parcel was still collecting dust at her friend's place, while she was somehow managing with a taped bridge and her Masters.  Serious shockwaves!

What's with broken glasses and being cool or not going to the ophthalmologist. I know someone who went to a frame store, tried some on, already ordered power glasses, and chose the one which best suited his eyesight, paid for them, and left. Trust me, that did happen!

There are people, who, for the last 24 years, never chose his own frames. The first, and last time he went to such a store was when he was in class VII, and that amazingly sturdy frame, which by the way, survived a five storied fall, was replaced only after his marriage.

He got married wearing that discoloured, disfigured frame. There is no time for such trivial stuff, and for the last six months, his glasses went missing, and he believes his eyesight has improved at the age of 52. God help me!

Anyway, my dear readers, pick up your glasses, broken or otherwise, and do read the Bandarban travelogue on this week's issue of Star Lifestyle.

Photo: LS Archive/Sazzad Ibne Sayed